The Continuing Search for Hope

[Spoilers follow - beyond “The mutant-destroying robots don’t win,” which was never in doubt.]

By the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past, one may be tempted to ask, with Master Samwise, “Is everything sad going to come untrue?” Mind you, I’m as happy as anyone that we can all put The Last Stand behind us - time travel most definitely has its uses. But in spite of all the fun and the well-earned joy, my primary sense as I process this latest entry is one of beautiful melancholy.

I enjoy the X-Men saga for the action, the humor, the sheer inventive joy of watching various filmmakers play with their ever-expanding gallery of mutant powers (Quicksilver, indeed!). But the saga resonates with me because it is, and always has been, about the battle between Charles and Eric. And the battle is for Eric’s soul.

[Side rant, and you may as well shoot me now: I am probably the only person on the planet who doesn’t like X2. It’s particularly odd when you consider that I really like watching X2. I mean, it’s got Nightcrawler! And Magneto’s escape from his plastic prison! And the “good guy” scene! And a fantastic ending! And Nightcrawler! But I can’t make all of that add up to anything, and I think I’ve finally figured out why. The plot  - for very necessary reasons - completely sidelines Professor X, removing him as a mentor/authority figure until the very end. Which means that the moral choices made by the other characters do not directly reflect upon or affect his relationship with Eric. End of rant.]

Though Days of Future Past resolves and re-sets a lot of plot threads, what it doesn’t restore is at least as interesting as what it does. Logan, for example, receives a great and unanticipated joy, but “some things never change.”

And Charles? Mystique makes her climactic choice, but Raven does not come running back into her foster brother’s arms. And Eric is still on the path he chose at the end of First Class. Days of Future Past shows us, among other things, how lonely it is to be Charles Xavier. “We need you to hope again,Charles,” begs Logan, and hope is just about all he has. By the end of the film, Charles has returned to his wheelchair, doing his best to carry the pain of thousands: there is a glorious moment when Magneto accuses him of repressing his powers so that he can have his legs back, and Charles cries out, “So that I can sleep!”. It is suffering that makes him into Professor X, but it’s not automatic: it happens precisely because he consciously accepts that suffering. I am tempted, in fact, to say that he embraces the St. Andrew’s Cross.* But all of that is not enough to win the battle that he most wants to win.

We in the audience are given a little bit more. A glimpse of an ending that might have been, and might someday still be. The future that Logan so happily averts offers one moment of grace, as the dying Eric reaches, at long last, for his friend’s hand: “So many years wasted fighting each other, Charles. To have just a precious few of them back…”

Hope does not disappoint. I come back to X-Men to be reminded of Charles’ hope, and to remember that it is a hope we are all called to share.

*How ‘bout that? I did say it!

The Dark Night of the Artistic Soul: American Idol, Dorothy Sayers, and the Unnecessarily Long Subtitle

I recently read a terrible book. Not “terrible” in any way relating to vice - very well intentioned - but terrible artistically. I will not describe or name it, as that’s not the point of the post. I’m sure you’ve read a terrible book at some point in your life, so assume it was that one. (Unless you are thinking of Gaudy Night. Then I will be forced to hunt you down.) But that book was published. People paid money to print it, and people have paid money to read it.

Terrible books unnerve me. (So do really great books, but for different reasons.) Terrible books invalidate all of my hopes of validation, my faith that, even though I can’t judge my own work, other people can tell me whether it’s good.

See, not everyone is supposed to be an artist. But as the annual rounds of American Idol auditions amply attest, not everyone who thinks they’re an artist is an artist. So when that little voice starts whispering that there are plenty of untalented people in the world, and who are you to think you’re not one of them...well, how do you know whether that’s “just” depression, or the depression is actually telling you the truth?

Not all opinions are created equal, of course. How about the opinions of people you trust, people whose own work you admire, people whom you try to emulate? Better, but still not good enough. You see, I used Gaudy Night for a reason, up above. If you were to pin me down to one favorite novel, that would probably be it. Now take a look at this:

“I could not stand Gaudy Night. I followed P. Wimsey from his attractive beginnings so far, by which time I conceived a loathing for him (and his creatrix) not surpassed by any other character in literature known to me, unless by his Harriet.”

That’s J.R.R. Tolkien. (It’s in a 1944 letter to his son Christopher quoted in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.) And it’s not just a matter of taste, not a “does nothing for me but I can see the merit in it” assessment. He genuinely hates it, and hates it much more strongly than I hate the unnamed, not-Gaudy Night book that inspired this post. If one of my literary idols loathes the work of another of my literary idols, then how can I be sure of anything? Maybe Tolkien would loathe my work, and maybe he’d be right. In fact, maybe that terrible book isn’t really terrible. After all, it was published. People paid money to print it, and people have… [Cue vicious circle.]

What’s an aspiring writer to do?

I reject the idea that there is no such thing as “bad art”. There are “singers” who cannot sing, “writers” who cannot write, and “actors” who cannot act. (If you’re thinking of Gary Oldman, I will be forced to hunt you down.) But if I can’t trust myself, and I can’t entirely trust other opinions, then how do I know whether I’m a writer or not?

And this matters. Spiritually matters. We will be held accountable for how we have used our time. If I’m not a writer, I should give up pretending to be one and go figure out what I’m supposed to do with my time.

I’ve actually tried that. Oh, how I have tried. Told myself I would be happier, calmer, and much nicer to the people around me if I gave up on writing all of these things no one will ever read. The trouble is, it doesn’t work like that. I wind up jonesing - literally, my fingers start tapping for a keyboard because someone who never existed and who never will exist is talking to me.

Perhaps this is where depression is useful, even a spiritual gift (although, like many spiritual gifts, it’s in a color you hate and you scour the box for the return receipt). It reminds you just how minuscule the odds of success are. And that hurts like all heck, but somehow it doesn’t make a difference. You write anyway.

“It had overmastered her without her knowledge or notice, and that was the proof of its mastery.”

Yes, that’s from Gaudy Night.

Nightmares Should Be Heard, Not Seen

Okay, so I’m a year late on this one.

While hunting for something with which to ameliorate the tedium of jury duty, I discovered a) that the BBC had done a full radio dramatization of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, and b) that it was available on iTunes. It was a joyful discovery on at least three counts.

First, it is beautiful in and of itself: as marvelous a cast as one could hope for (seriously, look at that cast), performing a well-paced and graceful adaptation by Dirk Maggs. In a list of worthy contenders, this may be my favorite James McAvoy performance. His Richard is at once ordinary and unique, frustrating and charming, flawed and glorious - in a word, real. And though he sets the bar very high, none of the others falls short.

Second, having road-tested it, I highly recommend it for jury duty (but be prepared to restrain the urge to laugh out loud).

Third, it met a need I had begun to despair of filling. While I am often wary when a book I love is put on film, I generally want to see the result. Even if the adaptation is profoundly unsatisfactory, it can send me back to the book with a new perspective, if only by making me articulate more clearly why a particular choice was wrong. And even in an unsatisfactory adaptation, one can find treasure. For all the faults of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit (or, “Are we there and back again yet?”), it has given us Martin Freeman’s Bilbo.

But while I knew that there was a miniseries of Neverwhere - and knew that, in fact, the miniseries was the story’s original form - I didn’t want to see it. I’d read mixed reviews, but the aversion was more fundamental. I felt, in some way, that film was not the right medium for this story.

London Below is a collection of fragments, conjured in glimpses. Having the whole picture would diminish both the terror and the wonder, and that’s not just because the picture might be inadequate or not conform to the one I had formed. Richard spends most of the story metaphorically (and often physically) in the dark, and that impression is made stronger when we, as the audience, have only sound to guide us. Take the Night’s Bridge sequence: no visual medium could so completely isolate us in the darkness, with the nightmares waiting on all sides.

But of course sound, too, has its limitations. Lost here, for example, is the brief and beautiful passage about de Carabas’ fear of sleep. And radio requires more words to explain the ending, thus losing the novel’s exquisite simplicity.

The whole question of adaptation - of translating to different media, and what’s gained and what’s lost - gets at the limits of subcreation. The story is always bigger than any of our attempts to tell it. Yes, some versions will be better than others, but I don’t always want to have to choose. Take, if you will, Gaiman’s passage introducing Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar:

“There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar apart: first, Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup; second, Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr. Vandemar’s eyes are brown; third, while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no obvious jewelry; fourth, Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing at all alike.”

Now, that passage only belongs in a book. It has no place in radio. What you get in radio are Anthony Head and David Schofield. Who are utterly perfect, every bit as laugh-out-loud funny and breath-catchingly horrible as you want them to be.

And that’s the problem: I want both. I am still savoring Gaiman’s prose AND I am still chuckling over Head’s reading of “The corpses-to-be have a point, Mr. Vandemar.” They are both part of the story, but they can’t coexist in any medium we could use to tell the story.

And for all I have said about the superiority of radio over film in this case, even radio and novel combined are still incomplete. There is at least one thing I want to see. At the very end, I want to see that open door.

The pain we get from beauty is always the pain of desire. Nothing we can create is ever perfect, and somehow, the closer it gets to perfection, the more aware we are of the gap that remains. That gap is as frightening (to me, at least) as the gap that nearly ensnares Richard.

I’m starting to think of Heaven as the place where we get the whole story - not just one telling of it. Until then, I guess we have to “Mind the gap.”

Fiction Friday: Not for Profit, The End

[Part Five here.]

Jonathan turned to me and put out his free hand. “Miss Evans, I really am sorry for all this. I never…”

“Don’t tell me,” I snapped. I felt the adrenalin surge and realized, gratefully, that this was going to be easier than I thought. I pointed to Hector. “Tell him. Oh, right. You can’t. He’s dead.”

Turning my back on Jonathan, I walked over and knelt beside Hector’s body. I reached down and closed his eyes.

Jonathan addressed the remaining orderly. “How much do you want to let her go?”

As he spoke, I slipped the scalpel into my palm. It nicked my wrist, just slightly, and I knew I’d have to do this before the blood became noticeable. “You know what he wants.” I said. I stood up, gesturing with my free hand and keeping the scalpel pressed tight to my body, out of the orderly’s line of sight. “You know what they all want. It’s just money.” I was standing in front of Jonathan now. “Why do I have to die over money?”

I leaned forward, raising my hand, and Jonathan, who had never lost at darts, grabbed the scalpel and threw.

There was an awful gurgling moan and then a thud as the orderly hit the floor. Out of instinct, I started to turn, but Jonathan’s voice stopped me. “Natalie. Don’t. Look at me. Just look at me.”

“Keys,” I managed.

He shook his head. “The other one had them. There’s a pen in my jacket pocket.”

I grabbed his jacket and fumbled for the pen. He took it, dug his fingernail into a tiny groove at the base, and drew out a thin strip of metal. “Do something about your wrist,” he said as he worked the lock on the handcuffs.

I found a bandage, noticing in passing that Jonathan had hit the orderly in the throat with the scalpel. Funny how a split-second image can give you nightmares for life. Then Jonathan was up and grabbing my hand. He scooped up the orderly’s gun, and we were gone.

*******

Jonathan knew the closest side door. Nobody tried to stop us. I guess the few doctors and patients we passed had long since learned not to ask questions. Jonathan also knew where Hector’s Beetle was parked. When I saw the car, I did register a faint protest. “Won’t they be looking for this one?”

He nodded, his hands busy under the dashboard. “Yeah, but they may not have searched it yet. Check under your seat.”

As I did so, the engine sputtered to life. Under the seat, I found a cell phone, which I placed in Jonathan’s waiting hand. He dialed without taking his eyes from the road, but he smiled a little. “Sorry — I’m about to sound like a movie.” And he did. First an identification code, then an all-clear code. Then coordinates. Then an instruction to cancel any access or passwords associated with another identification code. And finally the news that he was bringing a civilian with him.

He hung up. Rolling down his window, he tossed the cell phone onto the road in front of the car and made sure he ran over it. A few minutes later, he pulled off onto a side road. He stopped the car in a clump of trees and pointed up a nearby ridge. “Can you climb?”

I slipped off my high heels. “Can you?”

He shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t bandaged. “Let’s find out.”

We scrambled to the top of the ridge. Beyond was a field, but it was also below, and I felt my bleeding feet start to give way. But there was a hand under my elbow. I stayed upright. “So… It’s all downhill from here?”

Jonathan kissed me. It was quick and rough, almost fierce, and everyone should be kissed like that at least once in their life. We stumbled and slid down together. At the bottom, he pulled me into the shadow of a tree and checked his watch. “Ten minutes.”

I sank to the ground and closed my eyes. “Natalie,” he snapped. “Talk to me.”

I didn’t care for his tone and opened my eyes so I could tell him so to his face. But then I saw the expression on his face, and in the same moment realized my palms were clammy. I decided he had a point.

I longed to ask about Hector, but I couldn’t. I knew neither of us was ready for that. Which left only one thing to ask. “Did you break up with me because you didn’t trust me?”

“No. I was…” He paused. “I was about to say I was protecting you. But that’s not really it. Truth is, I was protecting myself. I thought this would be easier if I had nothing to lose.”

“Do you still think that?”

“More than ever.”

I looked away. I had expected him to say he was protecting me, had been putting the finishing touches to my righteous indignation. But what he had said was unanswerable. I knew he would carry Hector with him for the rest of his life. Along with the knowledge of what had nearly happened to me. What right did I have to demand that he live with that fear?

“Natalie.”

This time there was nothing sharp about his tone. I looked around. He was holding out that gold signet ring.

“Marry me?”

I nodded. I tried to say Yes. But I couldn’t form the word, and before I could put out my hand for the ring I collapsed, fell to pieces on his shoulder. He gasped. I realized it was the wrong shoulder, started to pull away, but he shifted position, pulled me back toward him, and let me cry.

*******

That was two years ago. The scar on my wrist turned out to be bad enough to need explanation. On the flight home, Jonathan concocted a story about the night we’d been making our second batch of margaritas and I had just picked up the knife to cut the limes when he turned around and bumped into me. At first, I had objected that I was perfectly capable of being that clumsy all by myself, but he was adamant that it be his fault, and I let him have it. After the trouble that story took, we were both grateful that his scar was easier to hide.

It’s tough being married to an historian. He’ll be gone for weeks or months at a time, chasing down some obscure reference in a library halfway around the world, or following the trail his subject took so he can make the book authentic. My sister thinks he’s a little crazy, in a harmless sort of way, and that I’m a little crazy to put up with him. I just tell her that he has his work, and I have mine.

The hospital is still in business, under new management.

They did not get the grant.

Fiction Friday: Not for Profit, Part Five

[Part Four here.]

I took the knife. I walked over to Jonathan. Hector caught my eye: “Just think about the bullet. Don’t think about him.”

Jonathan grimaced at Hector. “Thanks.” But as he said it, his fingers quickly brushed my palm.

I did it. Don’t ask me how — I don’t know. I felt the muscle tense at the first touch of the knife and longed for the luxury of being sick. Instead, I started to feel around for the bullet. The entire time, Jonathan refused to make a sound, whether for Reyes’ benefit or mine I didn’t know. And I think that because of that, I was aware of him in a way I had never been aware of another human being. There was nothing but us and the silence.

And then, finally, there was the bullet. The sheer triumph of finding that one foreign bit of metal in living flesh made the next part easier. I dug the point of the knife, hard, under the bullet — I felt Jonathan’s entire body convulse, but still no sound — and flicked it up and out. It landed on the tile floor. Immediately, Reyes was at my elbow to take the knife. I wondered what the hurry was, because I sure didn’t have any plans for it, but then I noticed that Jonathan was lowering his right arm. I hadn’t even seen him raise it. Even at the time, I knew that the odds of his being able to do anything with the knife before getting shot were smaller than suicidally slim, but I supposed he had to try. It was not until much later that I remembered Hector’s remark. He’s the only one who can do what you want. Ever since, I have suspected that the odds of Jonathan accomplishing what he wanted were not slim at all.

I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be allowed access to any of the medical supplies surrounding us, so I took off that hapless linen jacket (coffee stains don’t come out, anyway). I tore off the sleeves, made one into a pad and used the other to bind it over the wound. As I tied the knot, my hands began to shake again. I supposed that meant they must have stopped at some point.

Reyes glanced at his watch. “Do you expect to prolong this indefinitely?”

“No,” conceded Jonathan, and the tremor in his voice told me what the last few minutes had cost him. “But I think I can manage half an hour.”

Another glance at the watch. “I can explain it to him.”

Hector laughed. “You’ve been working side by side with a CIA agent for the last ten months. This morning you let my partner walk in and drain the account. If you get the money back, maybe you can explain. Without it, not a prayer.” He nodded toward Jonathan. “So he’s right. Half an hour is all we need. Or I guess I should say, it’s all you’ve got.”

Reyes ignored Hector. “Say that is true,” he told Jonathan. “Have you considered that in half an hour, you will no longer be dealing with me, and that while I might offer you your lives, he never will?”

“Yes.”

“And have you made your peace with that?”

“Yes.”

I knew he had to say it. I’m not sure why I was so surprised that he meant it. And I still don’t know how I feel about it. Oh, I know — and knew then — that he was right. Ethics class in college (the first class where we sat together): You can’t judge the morality of an action by its result, or: the ends don’t justify the means. True, logical, and damn hard to live by. Especially when it’s someone else’s life on the line. Jonathan used to play devil’s advocate in that class, pushing the rest of us: Would we really live according to principle? Really? What about this? Or this? And now here we were. What about this? Jonathan had chosen principle. I loved him for it, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that at the same time, I wasn’t exactly thrilled.

I think Reyes also saw that Jonathan meant it. He took a gun from one of the orderlies. Then he gave Hector a shove. Hector stumbled forward, and a little sideways, but he never took his eyes off Jonathan. Jonathan started to speak, but Hector just smiled, and this time the smile said only one thing.

Have you made your peace with that?

Yes.

Reyes cocked the gun. “Five seconds.”

Five seconds of silence. Jonathan’s knuckles were white. Hector’s lips moved, and one hand came up to touch the rosary around his neck. Reyes closed his eyes. I wished I could.

And then the gunshot. Followed by a crash. Hector had fallen into a tray of surgical instruments set on a table nearby. A scalpel sliced a nasty gash in his forearm. I don’t know why that bothered me, since he was dead before he hit the floor. I wanted to grip Jonathan’s hand, but I wouldn’t have touched David Blair at that moment, so instead I backed away.

Reyes handed the gun back to the orderly. “Well, Mr. Blair?”

“I knew you were serious. Now you know I was, too.”

“And the lady?”

Jonathan didn’t answer. Reyes saw that as an opening and pressed on. “Dr. Perez knew what he was doing. Do you still insist that Miss Evans is innocent?”

“I do.”

“Make the transfer and I’ll believe you. I’ll let her go. If you like, I’ll even let her call you from the airport.”

Jonathan kept silent. Reyes looked at me: “Nothing to say?”

I kept silent. I wasn’t capable of forming words right then, but even if I had been, what could I say? Ask Jonathan not to be Jonathan? Not possible. Tell him I understood completely and would have made the same choice? Not true. So I just shook my head and focused all my attention on trying not to cry. One might as well face the inevitable with grace. At least feigned grace.

It was none of us that broke the silence. It was Reyes’ cell phone. He answered it, then immediately turned his back on us to conduct the conversation in muffled and very fast Spanish. Each of the orderlies was trying to listen in but still watch us, and while their attention was divided, Jonathan caught my eye. I expected regret, even apology, but got something much more practical: a quick glance, the most fractional nod of the head toward Hector’s body. It took me a moment, but all at once I realized that earlier, he and I had been looking at exactly the same thing. It’s just that he had seen it for what it was.

Reyes finished his conversation and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. Jonathan smiled: “He’s early, isn’t he? He usually is.”

Reyes headed for the door, gesturing for one of the orderlies to accompany him. It was the larger of the two, I noticed, pleased with myself for deducing that Reyes was more worried about his guest than about us. With his hand on the door, Reyes addressed us both. “I will be back, and I will expect an answer.”

For the first time, Jonathan seemed to have trouble meeting his eyes. Reyes nodded, as if he had expected nothing else, and left the room.

Showtime.

The Man Behind the Shield

[Spoilers follow about Captain America: The Winter Soldier.]

First, a tangential note: It’s pretty neat that a film about the dangers of S.H.I.E.L.D. as an offensive and a defensive weapon centers around a character whose trademark is...a shield (that is both an offensive and a defensive weapon). And that, at the climax, his shield winds up at the bottom of the Potomac.

The Winter Soldier is about several things, most obviously the tension between liberty and security. It is also about trust. The trust we place in institutions, and the trust we place in people.

We often trust institutions because of people. Steve Rogers tells the elderly Peggy Carter that he joined S.H.I.E.L.D. largely because she helped to found it. And we in the audience have come to trust S.H.I.E.L.D. because it is led by Nick Fury (who is, let us face it, awesome) and because it employs Phil “first name Agent” Coulson.

But no person is wholly trustworthy. It’s not just that it can be hard to spot the bad guys, though Fury’s wonderful speech about why it took him so long to see through Alexander Pierce (“This man declined the Nobel Peace Prize. He said that peace is not an achievement, but a responsibility. This is why I have trust issues!”) makes that point eloquently. Even the people who are honestly trying to be good guys can be wrong: Project Insight was Fury’s inspiration.

And yet, the solution is NOT never to trust. When Steve tells Pierce that Fury’s last words were a warning to trust no one, Pierce wonders aloud whether that advice also applies to Fury himself. But Steve chooses to trust Fury. Just as Fury himself has chosen to trust Steve.

Trust, insofar as it can be achieved in an imperfect world, must be based on two judgments: a judgment of ends, and a judgment of means. An institution, however noble the ends of its leaders, can only ever be a means. While Steve knows that there is a real difference between Fury and Pierce as regards their ends, he also sees that their means are the same, and he judges that those means are fundamentally flawed. S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t just need to be reformed: it has to go.

Trusting people is more complex. We can judge their trustworthiness based on both the ends they choose and the means they choose to achieve them. And when evaluating a public figure, that may be all we can do: “Captain’s orders,” says the frightened technician who refuses to launch the carriers.

But in the case of those around us, it should always be our goal to see each person as a person. And that brings us to The Winter Soldier’s central relationship. Steve Rogers is as straightforward as they come. Natasha Romanoff is anything but. In most movies, the stage would be set for “opposites attract,” but Natasha’s arrow necklace reminds us why that will not happen. Which makes it all the more interesting that Natasha really cares about Steve. Her matchmaking attempts are not a result of habit: it is hard to imagine the Black Widow taking an interest in the personal lives of those around her. And yet she sees that Steve is lonely, and she does not want him to be alone.

We can trust a person to the extent that they see us as an end, not as a means. Natasha is used to creating personas that people will find useful - nearly always, of course, so that she can use them. “Who do you want me to be?” she asks Steve. “A friend,” he replies. As useful as the Black Widow is, Steve does not value Natasha because she is useful. He values her, period. And in caring about his loneliness, and in fearing rejection when she asks for his trust, she shows that she values him, with or without Captain America’s shield.

Fiction Friday: Not for Profit, Part Four

[Part Three here.]

Jonathan was sitting in a metal chair in the center of the room. His left wrist was handcuffed to the chair arm. His right hand was free, but his right sleeve was covered in blood from what looked awfully like a bullet wound just below the shoulder. His ruined suit jacket had been tossed onto a gurney nearby.

There was a large orderly already in the room, carrying a large pistol. After Dr. Reyes followed me inside,  the orderly moved to block the door. I know that must have happened, because he was there later, but I didn’t notice at the time.

I took a step toward Jonathan. “David?!”

I will never forget the look he gave me: his realization that, with everything I was feeling, I had remembered. “What is this?” I asked.

He looked at Reyes and answered, “A mistake.”

“Really.” Reyes didn’t sound very interested. He was already taking my laptop out of its case.

“A big one,” I added. “What do you think you’re…”

Reyes ignored me. He was only interested in Jonathan. “She delayed her visit for a week and arrived the day after you did. She spoke to you not five minutes after you met with me. She has spent the last six hours going through our financial records. And yet you expect me to believe that her presence here is coincidence?”

“I don’t expect you to believe anything,” said Jonathan, continuing to bleed. He looked at me: “Sorry.”

Reyes had opened my laptop. It gave its familiar start-up chime. I wanted to laugh, and then to cry: my computer still thought this was a normal day.

“Password,” said Reyes. I gave it to him. I didn’t dare look at Jonathan. I had used his birthday, for a reason that I was suddenly very much afraid he would misunderstand. When I set it up, I had told myself that it was the one number no one would expect me to use, but since I was having a hard time believing that right now, I didn’t think Jonathan would believe it, either.

But there were more pressing concerns, and I brought them up in a voice that was too loud because it was shaking. “I don’t know what’s going on here, and I don’t want to, and I promise I won’t say anything.” (That last bit was no longer true, but the lie came easily.) “But the Foundation knows I’m here, and…”

“Point,” agreed Jonathan, and if he wanted to take over I was happy to let him. “She can’t just disappear.”

“She won’t.” Reyes moved closer to me, but still addressed Jonathan. “On her way back to the airport, she will be tragically ambushed by the thieves who are such a sad fact of life in this country, and it will end badly. The only question is whether she will have been raped first.”

I felt my face go hot. I couldn’t control that, but I could and did look Reyes in the eye. And I rejoiced when he looked away. He took out his cell phone to send a brief text message, then returned to my computer.

“You won’t find anything there,” Jonathan told him.

“Maybe not. But I have a laptop and an internet connection. You could do everything I need right here.”

“Could,” agreed Jonathan. “Won’t.”

“And your partner?”

“I’ve told you she’s not…”

The door opened, and a second orderly came in, pushing Hector in front of him.

Hector took in the situation at a glance and clearly decided first things first. He took a step toward Jonathan, but Reyes shook his head. The orderly dragged Hector back. “If you want the doctor,” said Reyes, “you’ll have to pay in advance.”

Jonathan shrugged as well as he could. “I’ll save the money.”

I honestly don’t know whether I was surprised. About Hector, I mean. When I look back, it seems more than obvious. It seems inevitable. Standing there, watching him, I remembered that less than half an hour ago (if you care to measure in minutes) I had desperately wanted him to be what he seemed, had felt personally betrayed when he had appeared to be less. And all the time he had been more.

I think that time he must have read my thoughts. He gave me a smile that was equal parts laughter and apology. “I lied. It matters.” Then he looked back at Jonathan. “Bullet still in there?”

“Yeah. Any point in asking who you are?”

“No, but thanks.” Hector turned to Reyes, addressing him as if this were any other consultation. “He’s the only one who can do what you want. If you want him alive to do it, that bullet needs to come out and the bleeding has to be controlled.”

“Stop being a doctor,” snapped Jonathan.

“No,” answered Hector, and waited for Reyes.

Reyes said something to one of the orderlies, something that neither Jonathan nor Hector seemed to like. The man reached into his pocket and produced a nasty-looking clasp knife. There was nothing surgical or precise about it, which was clearly the point. I experienced a brief moment of nausea, anticipating what I was about to see.

Then I saw that the knife was being offered to me.

I backed away. “I can’t.” It came out as a whisper.

Reyes took the knife and came to stand in front of me. “If Mr. Blair would like Dr. Perez to take over, he knows what to do. If you prefer to wait and watch him bleed to death, that is your choice. But those are the only choices here.”